Seattle Rock n Roll Marathon Recap Part 2

See my preparations & course map here or Recap Part 1.  The second half of the marathon continued as we ran north on the Alaskan Way Viaduct, with downtown to our east and the water to our west.  Heading north, we ran on the lower level and had some shade, but not many spectators.

We finally ran up a little hill and were on the upper level and running by cruise ships right unti we dropped down into the Battery Street Tunnel, which was slightly shorter but much more  tilted left/right due to the turns inside.  Emerging from tunnel, we were greeted with another long and slight hill.

I really thought this part of the course sucked.  It was through semi-residential neighborhoods & just not much to see or look at for 2 miles each direction.  There was a pretty hefty hill near the bridge that you ran up/down both directions and the bridge was not nearly as scenic due to all the fencing and barriers that blocked the views.

I will say that they did have great cheer groups- local junior and senior high school girls all dressed up crazy and providing some entertainment and encouragement. Not nearly as many “unusual’ runners or characters out on this course as on other courses.

The first shot is the view from the turnaround on the bridge around mile 18.5, where  you just see an endless stream of people and hills in front of you- not very encouraging!  I did catch a glimpse of the Space Needle for a few minutes, but otherwise we really didn’t see any great landmarks or have any spectacular views.

Up and down hills, through the tunnel again and we were on the upper level of the Viaduct and ran by Pike’s Place and all the neat little shops and restaurants on the water front.

More downtown buildings (where there were some spectators lined up in the parking garages, but still not accessible if you wanted to meet up with them) and towards the more industrial areas with the ferry landing and the port.

We ran along the port which was pretty neat & interesting, but not really all that inspiring at mile 23.

The last few miles of the course 23-26 were just awful in my opinion.  We ran past the finish line at Qwest field and and to go out do another out and back loop on the freeway.  It was boring, ugly and lonely out there, and then we had one final cruel hill at mile 25 as we had to run back up on to the freeway only to run back down again.

We ran by both stadiums again and could see the finish line below us  and the runners on their last few turns after they’d ran down off the freeway. I think lots of turns, especially 180 degree turns, the last few miles & specifically at the end are very annoying.

By the finish line again, we turned back down an entrance ramp and ran downhill for a few hundred yards before entering another series of turn to make the block and head north again towards the finish line.  Most of the crowd was actually on the street near the bottom of the ramp waiting for their runners and the last 0.2 of a mile into the finish line was pretty deserted, minus all the food vendors with their delicious smelling popcorn getting ready for the baseball game.

I was so glad to be done with this race!  I still didn’t feel good the entire time- my tummy was hurting, but I didn’t take any bathroom breaks and was very happy with my time and my effort out there all by myself.

I was really expecting my time to be much slower given the tougher course and feeling less than 100%. I  really didn’t push myself very hard & was just happy to be moseying along.

As usual, the finish line was well organized and they had great food, drinks, bag pick up. One thing that made this a million times better than San Diego is that all the public transportation was just a few short blocks from the finish line- so people were hopping on traines, buses and light rail to get home.  My only advice here is to buy your ticket before the race- I waited in line for 20 minutes just to buy my $3 ticket.

My new Garmin worked like a rock star and even did pretty well through the tunnels.  You can see the elevation profile had some hills.  It wasn’t as bad as I was thinking it was going to be- I really only walked part of the hill at mile 25 and I managed to push through with a slow run on the rest of them.

I thought the finisher’s medal was very lovely as usual, although I’m sad they didn’t work in a guitar somewhere like they did on the other medals.

I was totally suckered into buying a few of the professional photos since hubby was not there taking pictures.  The first shot is up on the viaduct, probably around mile 22 or 23.  The one on the lower left is around mile 16 when we exited the tunnel for the first time & the last one is near the finish line with all the baseball game food vendors.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Attempting to head to Little Rock this morning since our pilot didn’t show up last week.